Peter Brock, back in a Commodore, was seventh, with Andrew Miedecke. Skaife and Richards would win the 1000 by a lap from the Grice/Percy VN Group A Commodore with the Gibbs GT-R third. In 1991, Skaife put his GT-R on pole almost one second quicker than the next car, another Skyline (Mark Gibbs), followed by the Sierras of Glenn Seton, John Bowe and Dick Johnson. Over the next two years, though, the Fred Gibson-managed Skylines would decimate the touring car landscape, taking out the championships and both 1000s. Only 27 cars finished, the Nissan Motorsport Skyline R32 GT-R of Jim Richards (who’d won the championship) and Mark Skaife was back in 18th, having only done 146 of 161 laps. The only other Commodore in the hunt was Larry Perkins’ privateer entry in seventh Perkins and Czech star Tomas Mezera would finish third. There were five Ford Sierra RS500s ahead of Grice on the starting grid and eight in the top 10. It was an early highlight in what would be a long and difficult gestation for HRT. Grice's partner was Brit Win Percy, who was in Australia running the newly-instituted Holden Racing Team. That year Allan Grice took his second 1000 victory in a VP Commodore Group A. The international Group A formula carried over into 1990 but again it was the turn of a homegrown Aussie V8 to upset the import apple cart. When a fast-talking businessman called Tony Cochrane turned up in 1996 with a commercial vision for the sport, it would be changed forever. It was a time during which the formula and fledgling organisation was quietly propped up by touring car stalwarts including Dick Johnson and Fred Gibson. But there one that matter above all else - the introduction of the V8Supercar regulations far and away the most successful category to have tackled The Great Race.Īfter the Group A era ended in acrimony at Bathurst with back-to-back wins for the hated (by hardcore fans) Nissan Skyline GT-Rs, the new Holden versus Ford V8-only formula was a return to familiar territory in 1993.īut few outside the circle know how close touring racing came to collapsing in those early V8 Supercar days. The 1990s was another decade of change at Mount Panorama.
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